Abstract: GBIF Data Portal is a prototype service providing access to the two types of
data which are being shared through the GBIF Network:

1. Taxonomic names. GBIF developing an 'Electronic Catalogue of Taxonomic
Names'. This will provide access to authoritative information about both
scientific and common names for all organisms, and will integrate data from a
wide range of different organisations. In ... mid 2006, the portal includes data
for over 983,000 scientific names and 253,000 common names from the Catalogue
of Life Partnership Annual Checklist.

2. Specimens and Observations. In mid 2006, the GBIF Network provides access to
about 100 million records of occurrences of different organisms originating
from 700 databases in 170 server computers located in 35 countries. Important
fields of these records are indexed and cached at the GBIF data portal. These
data relate to specimens in natural history museums and herbaria around the
world, or to living cultures of micro-organisms, but at least a third come from
observations of wild organisms. Wherever possible these records include
information about the locality where the organisms were found and are used to
generate maps of the distribution of these occurrences. Counts of occurrence
records are listed against the organism names to which they apply. For genera
and taxa of higher ranks, these counts include only those occurrences which
have been identified to the taxon concerned. For species these counts include
all occurrences for the species and also for any included infraspecific taxa,
as well as for any known synonyms.